News Release

Why the Bombing?

April 1, 1999

HOWARD ZINN
A widely noted historian who has authored numerous books including “A People’s History of the United States,” Zinn was a bombardier during World War II. He said today: “Not only was Clinton deceiving the public when he said his aim in bombing was to help the people of Kosovo, but he embarked on the bombing campaign with a reckless disregard for what would happen to the Kosovars as a result. The bombing will only create more victims, on both sides. Innocent Yugoslav civilians will die, so that both Kosovar Albanians and Serbians end up as victims of our policy.”More Information

JASMINKA UDOVICKI
Co-editor of “Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia,” Udovicki said: “NATO has provided a cover for Milosevic to carry out the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo. Now in Belgrade martial law is in effect. For someone to speak to foreign journalists and voice concern for the Albanians in Kosovo is viewed as treason and would risk being shot. Officials in the West are trying to portray opposition to the NATO bombing as support of Milosevic.” In reference to NATO blowing up a bridge over the Danube in Novi Sad, Udovicki said: “This is in the capital of the northern province with a large Hungarian community, which has opposed Milosevic. It’s extremely cynical that NATO is now alienating the constituencies that could have been allies of the West. People are very worried that it will not just be military targets, that NATO will hit the civilian infrastructure.”

PHYLLIS BENNIS
Author of “Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN” and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis said: “After the human costs, the next danger is that the U.S. is replacing the UN with NATO as its favored instrument of international legitimacy. This bombing campaign, which is achieving nothing towards stopping the brutal attacks against the Albanian Kosovars, stands in violation of the UN Charter’s mandate that the Security Council — not NATO or any other regional organization — must authorize such military force.”More Information

STEPHEN R. SHALOM
Professor of political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey and author of “Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War,” Shalom said: “Humanitarianism has never been the driving force in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. denied access to Jews trying to flee Hitler’s Europe and refused to bomb the rail links to Auschwitz. In Rwanda in 1994, Washington pressured the UN to withdraw a peacekeeping force that could have averted that genocide.” Shalom added that we need to have “skepticism toward intervention by the United States, which has tolerated and even supported ethnic massacres when carried out by its allies: for example, Turkey against the Kurds, Israel against the Palestinians, and Indonesia against the Timorese.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167